Overall Satisfaction with The Raisers Edge
RE is being used by the Fundraising department to keep records of all constituents, gifts and events, track relationships, volunteers. The fundraisers use the proposals to track major gift prospects. We record all donations in it, import donations from Luminate Online and other online platforms into Raisers Edge using either RE import tool, RELO plugin or other plugins. The programming department uses it to record constituents. Marketing uses it to pull queries to communicate with constituents.
- Records various aspects of constituent involvement with the organization.
- Keeps record of all gifts.
- Data posting to Financial Edge (FE) is limited and complicated to understand (took us time to adjust). The posting report does not have enough info: Appeal, campaign and who posted to FE. In genereral, RE/FE integration is not explained by Blackbaud properly, we had to figure out everything on the go.
- Volunteer module is a bit cumbersome; some fields have duplicate fields in the event module; the identical information ends up being recorded in two different places.
- Our constituents are better organized.
- The fundraising structure is more streamlined and logical.
We made a transition to Raisers Edge from Donor drive 6 years ago and considered a Salesforce solution at the time. We found RE to be the most suitable for our overall needs.
Do you think Raiser's Edge delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Raiser's Edge's feature set?
Yes
Did Raiser's Edge live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Raiser's Edge go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Raiser's Edge again?
Yes
Using The Raisers Edge
Fundraising team, event organizers
gift processing, data analysis, finance and accounting
marketing
gift processing, data analysis, finance and accounting
marketing
2 - one person is processing gifts
one person is responsible for the overall database management
sometimes we get volunteers for simple data entry
one person is responsible for the overall database management
sometimes we get volunteers for simple data entry
- constituent management
- gift processing and prospecting
- our integration with Financial Edge is specific to our organization use
- not sure, we are using almost all the segments
- possibly utilize actions more
Evaluating The Raisers Edge and Competitors
Yes - Donor Drive
- Product Features
- Product Usability
we needed a better way to segment our database and allow recording a more intricate fundraising structure. RE allowed us to do that as opposed to just event management in Donor Drive
we are constantly re-evaluating our options and still believe that RE is the best CRM for our needs.
The Raisers Edge Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Yes - it was more than 6 years ago but i think it was creating the structure, data conversion, training, going live.
Change management was a major issue with the implementation - we ended up with a better fundraising structure, overall constituent management and better understanding of our base.
- data conversion
- integration of RE with FE - the biggest challenge
The Raisers Edge Support
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes - sometimes the integration with LO and FE causes issues. Usually we get them resolved to our satisfaction
we recently had an issue with BBMS/LO. A donor approached us with request to refund 2 out of 3 credit card charges. we discovered that 2 of these donations had been entered in LO as offline unconfirmed gifts and then confirmed by using the same credit cart. It took a while to figure out how it happened. Blackbaud customer service found the reasons and explained everything to us within a week.
Using The Raisers Edge
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using | None |
- gift processing
- queries
- Events Module and Volunteer module overlap and I was not sure which of them to use for recording volunteer participation
- volunteer module is pretty cumbersome (while you can record a lot of information, it requires a lot of time and effort)
Yes, but I don't use it